Hello! I’ve been using Tiller for a couple of years and love it. Recently, my mom has asked me to help manage her finances, so I’d like to get tiller set up for her accounts. What is the best approach for this? Can I simply start a new worksheet that will contain her accounts only?
Also, she’s going to be transferring data from a very old version of quicken. I’ve found the help article on exporting/importing from quicken, but wanted to know if anyone knew of any gotchas I should keep an eye out for?
I think the best way is for you to set it up under her login. If you do it with yours, you’ll get your financial information mixed up.
In Google Sheets, you can share, or grant access, with others, so that might work out.
Otherwise, if you do put it on your Tiller account, I’d make sure to setup an AutoCat where it tags all transactions from your mother’s account with Mom tag, so you can exclude those from your reporting, but it will be a pain in the neck to do.
WAIT!!
Never mind. You can add accounts and then restrict those accounts to specific Google sheets. On the top of the Tiller account page, you’ll see a list of linked sheets, and if you drop down, you can select/deselect accounts. So you can create a sheet for your mom, and go to connected accounts (in Google Sheets tiller console) and add only her accounts and remove yours. Then download transactions and go to the Balance sheet and verify.
THAT is genius! I am getting ready to inherit two accounts that I do not want mixed in with mine and was already thinking I’d have to create a new google account to do it. Now I don’t have to!
One thing to keep in mind is that if you give those sheets to someone else, they can add any account that is linked to your Tiller account, so keep that in mind if you decide to share/link with others.
A collaborator (someone who has access to the spreadsheet) cannot link other accounts associated with your Tiller subscription. The Tiller Money Feeds add-on requires a Tiller subscription to log in and since that’s how you access accounts connected to Tiller others who just have access to the sheet won’t be able to link any of your other accounts to the spreadsheet you’ve shared with them. Same with the Tiller Console, which is where you can also link additional accounts to a spreadsheet. They’d need access to your Google credentials in order to log in to the add-on or the Console.
One of the ways I share our Tiller account with family (specifically our children) is to connect their accounts (because I have access to their bank credentials) and then I create a separate spreadsheet for them, powered by my Tiller account, and then I share those specific spreadsheets with each child. One Tiller subscription, many bank accounts, multiple spreadsheets, all serving different family members.
If you add the accounts to your own Tiller account but link to a separate spreadsheet (which would definitely be the easiest and cheapest), just know that you are going to need to have your mom’s account log in info, so you will have full access to her accounts, so you’ll just want to be sure she is ok with that. You may also want to change the phone number on those accounts to be your own, as you may periodically need to re-authenticate the accounts by generating a code to your phone – but then if your mom also needs access for another purpose, it may be annoying to have your phone on the account when she needs it, so you’ll have to see the best way to do this. If your mom doesn’t want to share the full account log in details with you, you could have her type in her account info into your Tiller either via screen share or in person, and then you’d just need to circle back with her anytime you need to reconnect to the account.
Peter, I’ve preached tiller to my kids for years and offered to let them use it. Now that Mint is going away, my oldest, who is now in college wants to try Tiller. Do you share your account with adult children or are they still young? I’m wondering if I should share a spreadsheet with him or if he should get his own account. If he tries sharing mine for a year, but later decides to break off, would he be able to transition his spreadsheet to his own?
@wipersnaz great question. You could do either, but in terms of giving your kids a system they can keep running with through life, with the possibility of including their own partners and kids someday, they will get the most mileage from their own account. We offer students their first year free here Student Plan - Tiller. Furthermore, if your kid adds new accounts (credit cards, mortgages) they can manage those with complete freedom if it’s in their own Tiller account.
(That said, if they do use their own spreadsheet spawned from your account, of course they can copy spreadsheet data to their new Tiller account when they eventually open their own Tiller account… a little extra work but doable.)
Thanks for the tips. I didn’t know about the first year free for students, that may be a good incentive. I’ll discuss what he wants to do and then go from there.
Thanks for all the contributions in this thread, very helpful. My wife and I have both shared and separate bank accounts and credit card accounts, but would like to see the transaction data visualized in one Spending Trends dashboard. I was going to create a separate spreadsheet in my Tiller account, with her linked accounts, but was wondering if I can link the two spreadsheet transaction worksheets from two different spreadsheets to display summary data from all of our accounts in one dashboard. Thoughts? Advice?
